Pundits, Decrying the Horrors of War in Aleppo, Demand Expanded War

As with Iraq and Libya, these laptop bombardiers offer no clear plan for how to actually end the suffering of the Syrian people.

August 24, 2016

Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, the boy who became the face of Aleppo’s suffering. (Aleppo Media Center)

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The devastating photo of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance after his home was bombed in Syrian or Russian air strikes has amped up calls for direct US military intervention against the Syrian government. The now-viral photo of Omran—and the broader siege of east Aleppo—was prominently featured in most major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TheGuardian, and several other publications. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all ran stories on the photo, and editorial boards and pundits weighed in as well, with several insisting that President Obama must “do something” to stop the suffering of the Syrian people.

According to the Chicago Tribuneeditorial board, State Department officials “sent a cable to Obama, urging stronger military action against Syrian government forces. They suggested that could include cruise missiles and ‘targeted airstrikes.’ That’s what we mean by leverage, of a sort Putin would comprehend.”

In The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote (in response to the siege of Aleppo, but before the photo went viral): “Many experts recommend trying to ground Syria’s Air Force so it can no longer drop barrel bombs on hospitals and civilians. One oft-heard idea is to fire missiles from outside Syria to crater military runways to make them unusable.”

And on Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough proclaimed: “Inaction by the United States and the West and the world is not only responsible for this [holding up the Omran image] and 500,000 deaths, it’s responsible for those images of those Syrian refugees, the little boy we saw washed up on the beach…. The world will look back. Save your hand-wringing…you can still do something right now. But nothing’s been done.”

So what do these outraged observers want “us” to do to ameliorate Syrian suffering? For prominent pundits and leading editorial boards, the answer is usually bombing the Syrian government. More often than not, they use humanitarian euphemisms like “safe zones” or “no-fly zones.” Rarely mentioned is the fact that establishing these zones would require US bombing of Syria’s air capacity, including infrastructure, planes, buildings, possibly troops. That would, in effect, be a declaration of war. How Russia would respond is anyone’s guess, but it would certainly heighten tensions between Washington and Syria’s longtime ally (which also happens to have the world’s largest nuclear arsenal). One 2012 Pentagon estimate found that enforcing a no-fly zone would involve at least “70,000 American servicemen”; another estimate insisted such an effort would involve “hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines and other enablers.” These messy details are hardly ever mentioned when the do-something crowd calls for “action” in Syria.

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The pundits also omit the rather glaring fact that the United States and its allies have done quite a bit already. Those pushing for bombing repeatedly assert that Washington sat “idly by”; while they sometimes concede that the Libya intervention was bad, they still insist that “doing nothing” in Syria has been far worse. The overall assumption is that US-led airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad’s government would have been preferable to the long-drawn-out conflict that has taken place.

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But this would only be fair if the conflict weren’t partly funded and armed by the United States and its allies in the first place. The United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey have actively armed, funded, and fueled the opposition for years. One Washington Postreport puts the total CIA spending on anti-Assad forces at $1 billion a year—or one in every 15 dollars of the CIA’s official budget. This inconvenient fact is tossed into the memory hole in favor of a simplistic fable of Rwanda-like indifference.

Even if they could make the case that Obama has, in some rhetorical sense, “done nothing” by not doing enough, the pundit hawks still have their work cut out for them. The pro-intervention pundits now widely accept that Washington neglected to plan for the aftermath in Iraq and Libya (President Obama even called the latter case his “worst mistake”). Yet almost no one calling for a ramped-up war in Syria has offered a clear indication of what it would entail. What are the risks? What is the endgame? Is there a realistic alternative to jihadi extremists seizing power, or—perhaps even worse—continued brutal warfare between rival militias after Assad is gone? We should be wary of pundits who use the horrors of Aleppo to rush Washington into bombing, just as they did with Iraq’s alleged WMDs and Gadhafi’s hypothetical massacres.

This is part of the broader problem of moral ADD afflicting our pundit class—jumping from one outrage in urgent need of US bombs to the next, without much follow-through. Kristof, for example, was just as passionate about NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, writing severalop-eds that called for bombing in equally moralistic terms. Yet as Libya descended into chaos, the country faded into the background for him. His last post on the subject? September 2011. The plight of Libyans was urgent for the Times columnist when it involved selling war to weary liberals, but once the smoke cleared, his bleeding heart dried up and he moved on to the next cause.

Will Kristof and other pundits do the same with the Syrian people in the event that Assad’s government collapses after sustained US bombing? Given their track record and the lack of serious discussion about what “doing something” entails, this is the most important question—and one that few are bothering to address.

Adam H. Johnson has the decency to note that the Syrian child Omran Daqneesh was maimed by Russian or Syrian Government airstrikes. Omran’s brother Ali Daqneesh was killed, as are regularly now scores of other civilians in the ongoing savage attacks on Aleppo by Assad’s airforce and Russia’s. Not bothering to make a condemnation of these perpetrators, Johnson reserves his moral distress at those so outraged by the slaughter that they actual urge something be done to stop it! Johnson has nothing to offer as an alternative to stepping up the currently almost non-existent pressure from the Obama administration to stop the siege of Aleppo. John Kerry talks endlessly to Sergey Lavrov, while children are buried alive under the rubble of their homes this week and next, and the week after that. Pundits like Johnson beckon us to the Libya analogy, but the hell in Syria today, whose fate has been left to Putin and Assad, is surely no better than that in Libya. It is indecent to allow the current slaughter to continue out of fear that it might get worse if serious pressure were exerted. Diplomacy can work well, but only if there is another option on the table.

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000010140says:

August 27, 2016 at 10:41 am

To put it plain and simply, as I have before on various websites, the US was wrong and stupid to try to bring down the recognized Syrian government (the "regime change" thing). The "democratic opposition" never really existed, and the weapons and fighters the US threw into anti-Assad efforts just went to jihadists and Sunni anti-Shia extremists. OK, Assad isn't a nice man, but who in that region is? He won two elections. Those opposed to him refused to vote but that's hardly Assad's fault. He has been rough on rebels against his (arguably legitimate) government but what government isn't? Wasn't Abraham Lincoln? Did the failure of people in the "Confederate States" to vote invalidate the 1864 presidential election? If the US had been intelligent it would have backed the Syrian government all along and used its influence to moderate Assad's behavior. Instead it helped create the various jihadist groups. Now Russia has done what the US should have done and the US is left looking stupid. And of course as usual there are neocon types wanting the US to do stupidity even worse. War with Iran at least? Leading to worse? Obama let the US wander into this mess but at least he has refused to intervene militarily in Syria with US forces. Hillary? I'm worried. Trump? I'm frightened.

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Brigitte Meiersays:

August 26, 2016 at 4:01 pm

It is what Obama was trying to do: prepare the ground for Hillary to intervene militarily in Syria against Assad, which is what she advised since the beginning, despite the utter failure in Libya. The US does not consider Libya a failure. Like Irak, Yemen, Mali, Somalia and so many other countries, the principle aim of the US is to destabilize, destroy and de-industrialize any independent or China tilting country in the world to maintain US hegemony. In Syria, Obama's preparations for more war went awry as Russia used an Iranian base to bomb ISIS in Syria and with China and possibly India as well, entering the war in Syria with humanitarian help and training for soldiers. That means, any intervention in Syria by the US will guaranteed be the start of WW3. Good move Russia. This is the second time Russia prevented and aborted WW3.

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Russell Gerrishsays:

August 26, 2016 at 12:28 am

Isn't it time for one 'last' desperate attempt for the UN to assert itself as a useful world body, and warn the US not to attempt another illegal intrusion into one more country. The threat could come with reference to the World Court in the Hague, and would name not just the country but the chief political and military individuals. When it gets personal, maybe the warmongers might pay more attention. War crimes charged upon the persons make more sense anyway. If the UN does not "get some balls" and assert itself, it may as well dissolve. It has declined in influence to such as low point as now, its authority is on the ropes.

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Charles Van Weysays:

August 25, 2016 at 4:04 pm

Our glorious leaders are tendentiously selective in whose suffering they care about. The photographer who took the above is a friend and associate of the guys who recently tortured and beheaded a 12-year-old boy. Strangely, a photo of one of his freedom fighting head chopper friends holding aloft the head of a kid he'd just murdered didn't go viral. Our "leaders" have dug a moral cesspool in which we will all eventually have to swim.

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Dennis Ditulliosays:

August 25, 2016 at 2:35 pm

ME nations/tribes need to sit down, brake down the Colonial borders of yon, and recarve nations or condensations or whatever "they"" can come up with rather then killing each other (though that works too). But leave me out and please don't help by selling they our MI C hardware/software.

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Louis Proyectsays:

August 25, 2016 at 12:17 pm

Interesting how the Nation has become a sounding board for RT.com. I guess that we can blame Stephen F. Cohen for that but who knows? Katrina is just as addled. What's next? A guy from the American Conservative magazine writing for the Nation on behalf of Russian intervention in Ukraine?. Gosh, I forgot. They've been there, done that.

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Kathryn Levysays:

August 25, 2016 at 12:35 pm

Thank you for this column. It's clear to me that the groundwork is being prepared for a major intervention in Syria, yet too few are asking what that would really entail and how it could possible make things better. We need more voices raising the important concerns that this writer raises.

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Brigitte Meiersays:

August 26, 2016 at 3:58 pm

Yes, that is what Obama was trying to do: prepare the ground for Hillary to intervene militarily in Syria against Assad. That now went awry as Russia used an Iranian base to bomb ISIS in Syria and with China and possibly India as well, entering the war in Syria with humanitarian help and training for soldiers. That means, any intervention in Syria by the US will guaranteed be the start of WW3. Good move Russia. This is the second time Russia prevented and aborted WW3.